7 comments:

I won't venture as to which movie will be more critically acclaimed or win more awards, but I think The Prestige might well make more money. On the one hand, it is right before Halloween and, while The Prestige is not a horror movie, its premise may appeal to fans of that holiday. On the other hand, it seems to me that war films of films touching upon war have not done particularly well at the box office of late. I think Flags of Our Fathers will do well, but not nearly as well as The Prestige.

I certainly don't think The Prestige will hold up once people actually see it. By all accounts it's emotionally distant and tiresomely overplotted. In other words not the sort of movie to keep pulling audiences in once word of mouth spreads. By contrast I think Flags will hold up pretty well with strong word of mouth from the older crowd. Whatever weaknesses there may be in FOOF - and curiously most of those who didn't like it are bitching about the fact there weren't enough war scenes - will likely be ameliorated once Eastwood's companion film Letters from Iwo Jima comes out. Then the two movies can be assessed as a single unified vision on the part of their director and I anticipate the reputation of both films will rise accordingly.

I'm excited to go see The Prestige tomorrow (Friday) evening, not only because we have free tickets, but also because I like the cast and the director. I don't know if I'll see Flags of our Fathers or not, but one of the "luncheon singers" is a lady at our church!

Flags of Our Fathers was really a mess. The movie can't decide if it wants to be an intellectually honest, vaguely cynical war experience movie or a heavy-handed over the top sap-fest. The acting was some of the most atrocious stuff I've ever seen in a movie with this much prestige, especially Adam Beach. I seriously wanted to gag at several parts.

And it really is not necessary to be so repetitive. I get it, the government is exploting soldiers! People are racist against Adam Beach's character! His character has emotional problems! Here, let me take my themes and bash you over the head with them repetively with my theaterical sledgehammer, because you as an audience might not be intellegent enough to understand what I'm trying to say.

I don't mind that there weren't more war scenes, what I mind is that the non-war scenes were so horrendously executed. I'm not even going to start on the many structural and narrative problems.

Such a profound disappointment really. The mainstream reviews for this movie are really shockingly uniformly positive. Do people really love Clint Eastwood this much? Ugh. C-/D+

As for The Prestige, it is enjoyable enough, but rather predictable given what I think it is trying to go for. Pretty well executed technically and interesting up until the end, which was just a little disappointing. Although maybe the real theme Nolan was trying to go for was confusing you with which magician was actually more of a scumbag, not their secrets. B

Also incidentally, I saw Marie Antionette, which was technically excellent but really can't overcome the problem that it is a movie about BORED people, a problem Jarhead from last year suffered from. I might end up liking this one more on another viewing on DVD though, as maybe I'll forgive the repetitiveness and complete lack of narrative or plot and enjoy the character study a bit more. And no, if you've heard about the ending, that's not why I didn't like it either. I actually thought that was good. And I don't mind anachronism as a rule either. C+

I suppose this is only to be expected, after being on a hot streak with Jesus Camp, Mutual Appreciation, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, The Queen, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and The Last King of Scotland, I was due for a few disappointments as I was wondering when I was going to end up seeing a bad movie for awhile there.

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